Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England

What have poems and maps, law books and plays, ecclesiastical polemics and narratives of overseas exploration to do with one another? By most accounts, very little. They belong to different genres and have been appropriated by scholars in different disciplines. But, as Richard Helgerson shows in this ambitious and wide-ranging study, all were part of an

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What have poems and maps, law books and plays, ecclesiastical polemics and narratives of overseas exploration to do with one another? By most accounts, very little. They belong to different genres and have been appropriated by scholars in different disciplines. But, as Richard Helgerson shows in this ambitious and wide-ranging study, all were part of an extraordinary sixteenth- and seventeenth-century enterprise: the project of making England.

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Helgerson shows that such a diverse group of writings as Spenser's Faerie Queen, Coke's Institutes of the laws of England, Camden's Britannia, Speed's Theater of the Empire of Great Britain Drayton's Poly-Olbion, Hakluyt's Principal navigations of the English nation, Shakespeare's history plays, and Hooker's Laws of ecclesiastical polity all were part of an extraordinary 16th- and 17th-century enterprise: the project of writing England as a nation-state. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)